Thomas Telford was born in Eskdale, Dumfrieshire to the son of a shepherd. Sadly his father had died three months before he was born.

On leaving school he was articled as a stone mason, working first in Edinburgh and then at Somerset House, London. There he came to the attention of William Pulteney, the wealthy MP for Shrewsbury and was soon appointed County Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire in 1787. He set about a radical improvement of roads and bridges, later devising a new form of chipped stone road surface, but it was in canal construction that he excelled. He constructed a canal bridge on the Shrewsbury canal in the form of an iron trough which became the prototype for his magnificent Pontcysllte viaduct over the Dee Valley on the Llangollen canal. Telford's philosophy was to build on a grand scale, cutting through contours rather than going around them as did many of his predecessors. Such a approach was more costly, but yielded a more direct route and a more lasting structure.